Some people I know seem to think feng shui is bunk. They have a nice, vain, insecure little chortle to themselves about how obvious it is that feng shui (originally ancient Chinese burial practice) is complete bunk; something for dopey LARPers who don’t understand the brilliance of science and the difference between correlation and causation.

W. Smoke, Esq.’s flawless argument for how feng shui works is as follows:

(1) Everyone agrees that music can be an emotional catalyst — a conduit to emotional and psychological states of mind. Even people who don’t care much about music will agree — music makes movies, advertisements, plays, etc. much more manipulative and affecting. Music is a medium of illusion, but an obvious one, which can make it more potent, ironically. So, we can be affected by music.

(2) If music does this, so do all forms of art — especially visual art. Paintings by sorcerors and illusionists have distinct effects upon the mind and environmental perceptions (stare at Van Gogh for too long and you feel spaced or forgetful) ; macabre or horribly melancholy paintings do likewise. There are also uplifting paintings: great masterpieces of sculpture, Daoist and Buddhist calligraphy, pinnacle achievements of technical craftsmanship in oil painting or ukiyo-e prints. All art and legit creative expression colors our mind.

(3) Paintings and music are intrinsic portions of a man-made environment. Sinister paintings create a sinister environment. And sinister art is simply a certain arrangement of lines, melody/harmony, aesthetics, etc. So, one could simply create an environment with completely decrepit and queasy arrangement, and the environment would be totally draining on a level related to natural energy. All environments naturally betray creative color or energy.

Ah! But that’s the missing link here: energy, or specifically qi. Most people don’t believe in it, because it’s not some concrete stuff they can put into a cup. The irony is that people don’t give a shit about the things that they can see and touch. Most of us, anyway. Actually, this is the entire point of prayer in religion (particularly Judaism/Xtianity/Islam): to elevate one’s gracious awareness of the delicate importance of all things we take for granted, like food and water, friends and family, the internet, our precious blog audience, etc.

So, for people to be aware of qi, they have to be aware of really basic things in the first place. Even if people could “prove” the existence of qi and these kinds of things, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. What good are people who refuse to cultivate qi because some scientist didn’t prove it to them first? Does anyone prove a sex drive to other people before they feel sexual impulses?

Anytime I go to a new geographical spatial location, I feel tired. I don’t mean I get exhausted when I go to the grocery store or the movie theater (god forbid), but when I travel a decent distance — to another state, country, continent, environmental region or ecosystem, and sometimes merely a different city. But I don’t think it’s “jet-lag”; I don’t think it’s merely that my biological clock is out of sync with the changing sunrise. No, I think it’s mainly that I am not acclimated to the flavor or “energy” that the particular region gives off. It sounds insane, but this is what I believe (momentarily).

There seems to be an acclimation period which takes a week or so to really get settled into the vibes of the locale. Sounds like baloney, but I don’t think there’s another explanation. Every time I show up at a new location, I am dead tired. And the usual things don’t stave it off: sleep, food, whatever. The hidden funk of a geographical location, the causeways of energy or whatever which give it it’s particular feeling or character are too strong for the greenhorn to get used to right off the boat. So it takes some period of adjustment in which you’re exhausted.

And where is the strongest emanation of local energy to be found? From water bodies (duh!) — particularly rivers. If there’s one useful thing I learned from reading books on feng shui, it’s that rivers carry energy through locations like veins carry blood through the body. Actually, I think this is the specific feng-shui definition. So, if you go down to the river of any place, you’ll find the river feels more like the place than the rest of the location. I.e. the Hudson feels like New York, the Potomac like Maryland and Virginia, etc. The spirit(s) of any place can be found in its rivers. And visiting rivers, you’d think it would make a person less tired when they’re trying to acclimate to a location, but I don’t know if it does (probably because I’m a dumb cowardly blogger LOLOLOL!).

In thinking about the different flavors of locations, I figure “pagan ideals” worship such a specific flavor of a location and not the energetic feedback (if you can even separate the two) but I’m just generalizing. But I do think the flavor of a location is a manifestation of the gods of the location. And I wonder if, even though we’re getting energy wherever we are, we’re still filtering it through our locale, through the local “gods”. So, thinking with my “New World”, post-industrial agricultural brain, is there maybe some kind of pure energy which has nothing to do with local filters? Energy that I could access?

Someone should really make an energy purification device like this and then cut me in on the deal.

I took my cat to the vet today. I didn’t tell the vet my feng shui theory, but then again, she’s actually sane (a.k.a. a machine of cold, logical western science!). One of my favorite “ultra-killing-science” instructors was mentioning the other day how feng shui is awesome and all, but it can’t make major changes in a short period of time or heal serious rifts. Like I once heard the story of a student who had a crappy marriage and bad feng shui in his abode, and radically improving the feng shui didn’t heal the marriage.

Of course, I think there is something completely usable, relevant and scientific to feng shui which makes me pursue it. I don’t particularly care for divination, though. Despite what I may have learned along the way, I never really wanted to learn that stuff. I don’t like the idea of looking into the future. I never practice tarot, card divination, crystal ball or looking glass stuff. Not interested! Well I am… just not in my own future.

But then again… isn’t medical science or practice related to divination? It’s just more concrete, so we think it’s the big kahuna — we think it isn’t so superstitious. But if you think about it, you go to a doctor and occasionally they give you a prediction: you will be healthy for a while, you have six months to live, etc. It’s not a whole lot different from a Chinese medical specialist who tells you which elements are out of balance in your body. Basically I think science is just saying, “well, if we have the evidence for this claim, there’s nothing you can do to refute it.” But evidence is only empirical data; data recorded within scientific mediums!

Not that I disagree. It’s a valid line of reasoning. It’s just that you can’t actually prove anything in life, or so the defeatist in me would say. Or I might phrase it, no matter what you prove, nothing is 100% for certain. Things always change or are subject to flukes and flaws and karmic flux.

Obviously divination isn’t a science, since it can’t play by empirical scientific rulesets. Yet I wonder what amount of divination can’t just be ascertained by expansive insight or knowledge of things. You know, an ability to perceive someone’s karmic lineage way far off into the distance, like what saints and arhats can do, or like the famed yamabushi ability to intimately perceive diseases or curses plaguing another person. Ultimately everything can be understood as karmic fluxuations. But how the frik do we get our minds to see to the very finest levels of being?

Ah, but I ramble! It is more interesting, seeing a cat at the vet. My feline in question is a house cat, which makes trips beyond the front door ever more disruptive to his psyche. I wonder how he perceives the vet. You know, the only place he’s ever been except our house is the vet. He might think the outside world is a population of veterinarians. It reminds me of that Philip K. Dick short story written early in his career, from the perspective of a dog who thought the garbage men were stealing possessions from his family. He couldn’t figure out why the family wasn’t concerned that all this delicious food was being stolen from them every week. Sometimes I try to perceive the world from the perspective of an animal, or try to feel people’s presences the way an animal would. I don’t constantly do this, but it is a worthwhile practice to empathize with animals.

Ole Bruun’s book, Feng Shui in China is one of a handful of academic works on feng shui I’m slowly reading through at the moment. Ahaha, I can hear you gasping in disbelief: “Academic?! Lizard Smog?! Not bloody likely!” Bruun’s book is very interesting, but I found the first half, which entails a political history of feng shui from the mid-19th century Qing dynasty up until the present, to be slow reading. It features a lot of political shenanigans, something I am loathe to read about in general. I bet that’s how politicians weigh us down and enslave the populace! With boring shenanigans!

The second half of the book is much more interesting. It involves the author’s field studies in a Sichuan provincial town. If you can find it in your local or university library or wherever, it’s a decent read. I find this general idea to be quite relevant to my current housing situation:

“In the fengshui mode of thought, the flow of qi is influenced by all natural bodies and by human constructions. Moreover, the relation between one’s own house and other buildings and constructions in the vicinity has a major impact on the common fengshui situation, since a larger house may catch more of the common qi at the expense of others. As a parallel to material wealth, which is seen as a limited resource, also qi is regarded as a resource that can only be tapped at the expense of other people’s share. But while access to material wealth is restricted by human politics, qi flows freely for everyone to catch and with considerably more room for manipulation.” (Bruun, Ole: Fengshui in China, 129)

There you have it! Proof that the people living in the mansion directly behind me are committing horrid astral, architectural experiments! You see, when I was living overseas a number of years back, the people behind me sold their side-yard to a contractor and built a big ugly mansion on it. Naturally, I was not pleased but there was not much I could do then. When I returned, there was a large ugly house on a tiny, not-even-half-acre lot. Soon afterward the wooden fence on the edge of our lot fell down and several of the large bushes on that property line died. Sorcery!

What is interesting is that the ominous, towering presence of that house blocks the sun and wind from that direction and also forces me and these neighbors (whom are quite unfriendly, unsurprisingly) to constantly catch each others’ glances from inside our respective houses. An awkward situation, to be sure!

The result is that one feels tense or timid when in the expansive sun room in the back of my house, which used to be my favorite room. And not just for me — it has always been one of my cats’ favorite room and territory. Yet over the years he has grown remarkably neurotic and stressed out, despite being an indoor cat and getting plenty of attention. I suspect it is because he is quite bright and quite bored, but I also have a hunch that the uneasiness me and my other housemates feel in that room is telegraphed and broadcast towards–or equally experienced–by him.

He has gotten quite ill over the years I have had him living with me here. He seems alright for the time being, but I find that the vet’s solutions for his neurotic behavior (obsessive-compulsively ripping out hair — a habit he did not have when he was younger) never last longer than a few weeks. Interestingly enough, when he starts sleeping in another room for whatever reasons (painting, renovations, repairs, etc.) he seems to be more relaxed.

I am not saying it is the horrible feng shui of that house which is doing stuff to my cat, but I do feel crappy when I’m in that room because this house is there “blocking the qi”. I mean, it’s wrong and foolish to conclude that one single thing is causing all one’s problems, but one can notice when something makes one feel drained.

To give an example of what I mean by this: basic feng shui stipulates that pointy things like corners should not point towards a person’s house, living space or whatever. Because: don’t you feel kinda uncomfy when you have a sharp corner jutting in your direction? It’s ominous. Isn’t it hard to sleep with a sharp or heavy object precariously dangling over your head? That worry in the back of your mind makes you lose energy. It’s pretty straightforward if you ask me.